Translations of the Zohar

Professor Avraham Elqayam

I would like to add some thoughts to the recent discussion about
the Zohar translation. My distinguished colleague, Prof. Pinchas Giller,
has brought up the notion that philological and etymological richness makes the Zohar text untranslatable. A similar position was voiced by my teacher, Prof. Yehuda Liebes, who has compiled an extensive Zohar lexicon.

The issue is very wide -- one can address philosophical aspects of translation,
as well as psychological, spiritual, mythological and theological ones.
Here I would only touch on some of the more direct issues -- the tension
between the concept of a absolute translation versus the concept of relative
ones.

I do not dispute the textual richness of the Zohar, and I do not dispute
that some of this richness would surely be lost in translation; however,
I hardly think this precludes the idea of translation. It only precludes
the idea of a canonical, absolute translation. Every translation
is transitory, every translation is relative to time, place, current norms
of translation, excepted solutions, translator interpretations and mannerisms
-- all these change, and translations change with them. A translation which was good fifty, twenty, even ten years ago, may not be so today. So we translate again. We make new solutions to the old puzzles.
In another ten or fifty years, someone will try other solutions.

There isn't, and cannot be, a "King James" canonical translation of
the Zohar. And there isn't, and cannot be, an absolute translation of the
Zohar. Nor should there be. There can be many relative translations, as
many as there as skilled translators willing to bend to the task. Each
brings his or her own interpretation and solutions, his or her own work
of art.

Rinna Litwin, a gifted Israeli translator, has once likened the translator's
work to that of the performing artist who performs a musical piece.
Each performer brings along his or her own unique interpretation, so that no performance is the same; and yet, each performance is a work of art, just as the original composition is a work of art. Each
performance is valid, in its own way.

The Zohar is the eternal music, heard by those who have the heart to
hear it as well as the ears and brains. Every time we read it, we translate,
we interpret. Whoever reads the Zohar, whether they make an explicit act
or translation or just an implicit one, conducts his own interpretation
and makes his own unique musical contribution.